Gibraltar Sun E-Book

Michael McCollum

• Herausgeber: JABberwocky Literary Agency, Inc.
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

The crew aboard the Stellar Survey Starship Magellan returns to Earth with bad news from their expedition to the Crab Nebula. Out among the stars, a million systems have fallen under the weight of Broan force—a fate awaiting Earth should the Broa learn of the planet's existence. Having received this knowledge, Earth's politicians argue over their next move, confronted by a problem with no acceptable solution. In the meantime, Mark Rykand and Lisa Arden have embarked on a dangerous mission to spy on this newly discovered, all-powerful enemy. They must gather useful intelligence quickly—if their cover is blown too soon, the extinction of humankind is nearly certain…

Leseprobe

GIBRALTAR SUN

Copyright © 2006, 2019 by Michael McCollum

All rights reserved.

Published as an eBook in 2019 by JABberwocky Literary Agency, Inc.

ISBN 978-1-625674-66-1

Cover design by John Fisk

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

JABberwocky Literary Agency, Inc.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Title Page

Copyright

The Rock of Gibraltar

Prologue

Part One

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Part Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

About the Author

Also by Michael McCollum

THE ROCK OF GIBRALTAR

Prologue

In a fit of exasperation, Germany’s Iron Chancellor, Prince Otto von Bismarck, once remarked, “There is a Providence that protects idiots, drunkards, children and the United States of America.” Bismarck’s comment has a special relevance for our current situation. For, if not an act of providence, how else to explain that we learned of the Broa before they discovered us? And, having become aware of their existence, what were we to do with that knowledge?

How should we secure our future against a species that enslaves every star system of which they become aware? Do we abandon our own colonies among the stars, retreat back to Earth, and pray the galactic overlords overlook us for a few more generations? Or do we take a more activist approach and risk immediate annihilation?

This conundrum became known as The Great Debate. And if the answer seems obvious in retrospect, consider that it was far from clear at the time. Those who faced the choice lacked our advantage of hindsight. Indeed, the fact that we even had a choice was something of a miracle.

Had a Broan craft stumbled across one of our interstellar colonies, the first we would have known of it was when their war fleet appeared in our skies and demanded our surrender.

Human nature being what it is, our species would never have submitted meekly. Our first impulse, and last, would have been to resist. In so doing, we would now be extinct. The Broa would have turned the Earth into a burned-out, radioactive cinder; and those of us who so loudly hail our recent victories would now be mere dust, blowing on a hot, dry wind.

Therefore, fellow revelers, when you celebrate tonight, consider for a moment what might have been—

From a Victory Speech by the

Right Honorable Samantha Ries-Morgan

To the World Parliament

12 October 2356

PART ONE

HOMECOMING

Chapter One

The morning sun was one-third up the vault of the sky as the silver bullet car came into sight of Lake Constance. Racing through a Swiss countryside dotted with picturesque villages scattered among green vineyards, the needle-nosed car jumped from one elevated electromagnetic accelerator ring to another, defying gravity with each effortless leap. At 500 kilometers per hour, the car left a condensation trail in its wake as its passage roiled the humid summer air.

Inside the car, Mark Rykand and Lisabeth Arden cuddled together on one wide seat and watched the world slip by beyond their window. After nearly three years in space, the greens, browns, and blues of Earth held a fascination that neither of them could readily have explained.

“Look, Mark, it’s the lake!” Lisa said at the first sight of the blue expanse on which could be seen a cluster of white sails. Lisa was a petite blonde with eyes of green and a nose that turned up at the end. Her mouth was a bit too wide for her face, with a tendency to dimple when she smiled. The permanent tan had faded after three years of living in vacuum, bringing forth the naturally fair complexion common to women of the British Isles.

“Won’t be long now,” he replied as he reached up to caress her cheek. Mark was of average height with a shock of sandy hair and blue eyes, and a smile that turned up more on one side than the other. His muscular physique had atrophied a bit aboard ship, despite his thrice weekly visits to the cramped gym in the engineering spaces. Even so, his torso remained comfortably taut, with no sign of the paunch he worked so hard to keep off.

On the opposite side of the lake, the glass-and-steel pyramid of Stellar Survey Headquarters was briefly visible before the line of pylons topped by accelerator rings dipped behind a low hill. The sight reminded him of the last time he had taken this particular journey.

It was not a pleasant memory.

* * *

For Mark, the adventure/ordeal had begun when he returned home late one night from a party to find an emergency message flashing on his apartment phone. Mark punched for playback and found himself looking into the eyes of a stranger.

The man identified himself as the duty officer at Stellar Survey Headquarters in Germany and asked that his call be returned as soon as possible. A call from the Stellar Survey could only mean one thing — something had happened to Jani!

Mark had last seen his sister at White Sands Spaceport three months previous when he had seen her off on her latest mission for the Stellar Survey. Jani had joked and laughed the whole time they waited for her shuttle to board. His last sight of her had come as she waved goodbye from the passenger bridge, her wild copper mane blowing in the wind.

It took two tries to punch in the number listed, his hands were shaking so. It took only seconds for his suspicions to be confirmed. “I am sorry, Mr. Rykand,” the duty officer intoned. “Your sister was killed in an accident three weeks ago while on a mission in the New Eden System.”

Grief washed over Mark like a sea of heavy mud. That grief had turned to suspicion when the officer proved unable to provide details of Jani’s death. After a sleepless night, he booked a suborbital flight to Zurich, and from there, rode this very bullet car toward Meersburg and the headquarters of the Stellar Survey.

* * *

“What’s the matter, my love?” Lisa asked, noticing his sudden silence as she snuggled closer. The sweet smell of her blonde hair and the familiar warm softness of her body snapped Mark back to the present.

“I was just remembering the last time I was on this line.”

“Oh, sorry,” she replied, reaching out to squeeze his hand. After lovemaking, they often spoke in whispered intimacies in their darkened cabin, communicating as couples have done since time immemorial. They sometimes spoke of the tragedy that had brought Mark into her life.

* * *

Having concluded that the Stellar Survey was lying, Mark searched the information nets for news of Magellan. He was not surprised to learn that the starship had returned to the Solar System. After all, how else could the Survey have learned of Jani’s death?

What did surprise him, however, was Magellan’s location. The ship was not at High Station, the jumping off place for starships of the Survey. Rather, she was docked at PoleStar, the Weather Directorate’s orbiting mirror that provided illumination to dark northern climes in winter.

Once the seed of doubt was planted, it quickly grew into a mighty oak of suspicion. Luckily, in his quest for answers, Mark was not without resources. Since his parents’ death in an air car accident, Mark had used his inheritance to pursue a life of leisure. Most nights he could be found at the Cattle Club, depleting their store of liquor. It was during one of these drinking bouts that Mark hatched a plan to discover the truth about his sister’s death.

Gunter Perlman was a renowned solar yachtsman for whom Mark had crewed from time to time. By agreeing to pay the freight, he cajoled Gunter into moving his yacht to polar orbit, ostensibly to try out a new solar sail in advance of the Luna Regatta.

Mark chafed with impatience as he and Gunter watched first one icy pole, and then the other, pass repeatedly beneath the yacht’s control pod as they constantly fiddled with the orientation of the sail to reshape their circular orbit into a lopsided ellipse.

At long last, the facility appeared in their viewscreen. Not long after, the radio came alive: “Space yacht, this is Magellan. You are approaching a restricted area. Advise your intentions, over!”

Gunter replied that he knew of no such restriction. There followed a brief discussion during which he was given the opportunity to declare an emergency. Perlman declined and tilted his sail to begin the long spiral back to low orbit while Mark donned his vacsuit and launched himself out the airlock.

He had barely cleared the yacht when his helmet reverberated with an order to halt. When he didn’t respond, the starship ordered three spacers out to intercept him. A deadly game of hide-and-seek followed.

Whether by luck or skill, Mark managed to reach the station habitat before his pursuers. Once there, he grounded on the hull and hid among the maze of heat exchangers, communications antennae, and other protrusions, intending to use the habitat’s hull for cover while he made his way to a point directly beneath the nearby starship. From there he would jump for Magellan, and once onboard, trade on his status as Jani’s only relative to demand answers. Hopefully, he would get them before he was carted off in handcuffs.

He never reached Magellan. While working his way around the perimeter of the habitat, he happened on a lighted viewport. As he prepared to skirt the obstruction, he glanced into the compartment within. What he saw took his mind off his goal.

The cabin beyond was occupied by Lisa Arden. With word of an intruder on the hull, station control had roused her from a hot shower and ordered her to opaque her viewport. Dripping wet and sans towel, she launched herself across the compartment in microgravity to comply. She arrived at the port a few seconds late.

Mark’s first sight was of a vision; breasts unencumbered by clothing or gravity, wet flanks glistening. The sight should have held him captivated. Instead, his attention faltered when he caught site of Lisa’s companion.

The being was approximately a meter-and-a-half tall, covered with brown fur. Its head was round, with two ears that stuck out, giving it a comical appearance.

At first he thought it was a monkey. One look into those large yellow eyes and he knew what it was the Stellar Survey was hiding.

Staring up at him from within the lighted compartment was an alien, one whose gaze reflected intelligence as great as Mark’s own.

* * *

The bullet car plunged abruptly into darkness as it entered the tunnel that would take them under the lake. Mark’s ears popped as the hurtling car compressed the column of air in front of it like a cork entering the neck of a bottle.

Thirty seconds later, it popped out on the German side of the lake. The car climbed a low hill carpeted with ordered rows of grapevines. At the crest, the accelerator pylons began a gentle turn toward Meersburg.

* * *

Captain Landon of Magellan had not been happy to discover that a grief-stricken brother had penetrated his security to the point where he had come face-to-face with the biggest secret in the Solar System. They couldn’t lock Mark up and keep him incommunicado forever, so they did the next best thing. They told him the whole story and signed him up for the duration.

Magellan had been orbiting New Eden when the granddaddy of all gravity waves had penetrated its hull. Moments later, sensors detected two unidentified craft, one of which was hurling energy bolts at the other. Under attack, and seemingly unable to return fire, the passive member of the pair fled for the refuge of the nearby planet.

At the time, Magellan’s Number Three Scout Boat was returning from New Eden’s moon. The scout’s position placed it thousands of kilometers closer to the battling pair than was Magellan herself. Jani Rykand, the scout’s pilot, reported that they too had felt the gravity wave and relayed scenes of the battle until it grew close. Then, as the smaller unknown reached minimum distance from Scout Three, it engulfed the scout in an energy beam, instantly vaporizing it and the eight human souls onboard.

Having seen his crewmembers murdered before his eyes, Dan Landon furiously considered how to defend his ship; which, save for a few hunting rifles and light machine guns, was unarmed. In desperation, he launched an interstellar message probe at the aggressor.

Message probes are miniature starships, and like their larger brethren, are not designed to operate deep within a planet’s gravity field. The probe disappeared into superlight, then reappeared in normal space as an expanding cloud of debris.

That cloud was moving at 60% the speed of light, directly toward the aggressor. Faster than the human eye could perceive, the smaller of the two unknowns was transformed into a ball of incandescent plasma silhouetted against the blackness of space.

With its tormentor destroyed, the larger unknown ceased its wild gyrations and went ballistic. Captain Landon dispatched one of his surviving scouts to investigate. When the scout’s crew boarded the derelict, they found evacuated corridors filled with the corpses of two different types of aliens. They also found a lone survivor representing a third type. The survivor bore a striking resemblance to a terrestrial monkey.

* * *

Lisa Arden’s introduction to the project had come when she was ordered from her duties as a linguistics professor at the Multiversity of London to the PoleStar habitat. Upon arriving in polar orbit, she discovered that she was expected to learn how to speak with the survivor.

The survivor’s name was Sar-Say, and though she intended to learn his language, he proved an able student and learned Standard. In pidgin speech, and with many misunderstandings, they began to communicate. Sar-Say explained that he was a member of a race called the “Taff,” and that he was a trader, and that he didn’t know why his ship had been attacked. Within a few weeks, his proficiency improved to the point where Lisa felt they could proceed beyond the “Me Tarzan, You Jane” stage. She had been getting a lot of pressure from Earth to get their ever growing list of questions answered. Thus it was that Sar-Say and Lisa attended the first of many interrogations.

That was when Sar-Say told them about the Broa.

Chapter Two

The bullet car pulled into Survey Headquarters’ transport station after passing over the ruins of Meersburg Castle. As the car decelerated smoothly to a halt, Mark and Lisa untangled themselves from one another and gathered their space bags from the overhead. They were watched with some amusement by Drs. Thompson and Morino, their two scientist companions.

Survey Headquarters was just as Mark remembered it. After an escalator ride from the transport station to the main level, they entered the public foyer. It was an open space large enough to have its own weather had the climate conditioners not intervened. The echoes were drowned out by an anti-echo field. The air around them seemed muffled, like on a lake when the fog rolls in.

“Ah, Mr. Rykand, welcome back!” a feminine voice said from somewhere behind them. Mark turned and discovered Amalthea Palan, the Survey Director’s assistant, hurrying across the wide expanse to meet them. It had been Ms. Palan who received him on his previous visit.

He shook her hand before introducing his companions. When the introductions were finished, she said, “If you will all come this way, the Director and his guests are waiting.”

She led them past oversize holographic displays of various colony worlds settled in the last century. Interstellar colonization was a hard, dangerous, and expensive business with as many heartaches as triumphs. Each new world had its own benefits and problems. An alien ecology was so complex that it was often years before colonists discovered the deadly disease that would wipe them out, or the environmental factor that made the planet unsuitable for human habitation.

There were a great many people on Earth who had tired of interstellar exploration. Some were opposed to the cost, while others were afraid of the unknown. Still others just didn’t see the point.

One such person was Mikhail Vasloff, the founder of Terra Nostra, an organization devoted to ending the economic drain of interstellar exploration and repatriating all colonists back to Earth.

The story Sar-Say told his interrogators made even ardent colonization advocates wonder if Vasloff’s position might not be the correct one.

* * *

According to Sar-Say, the Broa were a carnivorous race of reptiles that controlled the stargate network and used it to enslave every intelligent species they encountered. Without interstellar capabilities of their own, the other races were helpless against them. Once discovered, an inhabited world was given a simple choice: submit or die.

In this way, the Broa had expanded their domain to more than one million stars! After some debate, project researchers settled on the name “Sovereignty” to describe the Broan domain.

Not a few of those privy to Sar-Say’s interrogations found the story preposterous, claiming the pseudo-simian was the equivalent of a garrulous shipwrecked sailor, spinning yarns for the gullible natives. The problem, therefore, was how to determine the truth or falsehood of his claims. The obvious solution was to send an expedition to spy out the truth. The difficulty was a simple one. Where among the stars should humanity look for these Galactic Overlords?

Travel via Broan stargate was not like a starship voyage. The gates did not cross the vast gulf between the stars so much as bypass the distance altogether. Like a computer network, the system possessed a topology that was independent of its geography, making astrogation an unnecessary skill among the Broa.

Travelers embarked on a ship in one system and disembarked in another, never caring how many light years separated the two.

Although he had visited more than a hundred worlds, Sar-Say had no idea where his travels had taken him. Besides, without a common coordinate system, there was no way to convert his observations into information humanity could use.

Eventually, frustrated project astronomers hit on a method for testing Sar-Say’s assertions. They asked him to describe unusual astronomical phenomena he had seen, in the hope he would describe something they recognized.

Sar-Say had a good memory and was a fair artist once Lisa showed him how to use a drawing tablet. He spent the hours sketching night scenes from worlds he had visited. He rendered several constellations formed from bright blue stars. The astronomers programmed their computers to search out all of the known Spectral Class A and B stars in the hope that they could find a position and viewing angle to match Sar-Say’s sketches. They met with no success. The inaccuracies inherent in drawing constellations from memory were just too great.

One of Sar-Say’s paintings showed a view of a dark alien sea, over which floated large and small crescent moons. Above the moons hovered a complex ball of gas and dust filled with glowing filaments and dark tendrils. Sar-Say explained that on the world in question, this ghostly nebula was larger than the full moon is on Earth and its diffuse silver glow much brighter. The locals called the glowing apparition, “Sky Flower.”

The object was obviously a supernova remnant, and since there had only been a handful of nearby supernovas since the dawn of recorded history, the astronomers reviewed all the possible candidates. They found a good match with a supernova that had exploded around 6000 B.C in the Constellation of Taurus. The light of that particular cataclysm had not reached Earth until the summer of 1054 A.D, when it was observed by Chinese astronomers.

Sky Flower, it seemed, was Messier Object Number One — the Crab Nebula!

* * *

The party entered a private lift that whisked them silently to the office of the Director of the Stellar Survey. Mark recognized those already seated around the conference table, including one person he was surprised to see. As he entered, Nadine Halstrom, the World Coordinator herself, stood and greeted him. Others included Anton Bartok, Director of the Stellar Survey, and Dieter Pavel, the World Coordinator’s representative onboard PoleStar. Pavel was also a one-time rival for Lisa Arden’s affections.

“Welcome home, ladies and gentlemen,” Bartok boomed out. “We have been waiting a long time for this meeting. We’ve read your report, or at least the executive summary. However, Coordinator Halstrom wanted to hear of your adventures direct from the source. Who will be the spokesman?”

Mark raised one hand and said, “We drew straws and I lost.”

“Then proceed, Mr. Rykand,” the Coordinator directed.

“Yes, ma’am. As you know, pursuant to your orders, our fleet set out for the Crab Nebula to see if we could verify Sar-Say’s tales of the Broan Sovereignty. We were 375 days in transit outbound, and upon our arrival, we rendezvoused in System 184-2838, which in keeping with the spirit of the mission, we named Hideout…”

* * *

The expedition to the Crab had actually been to the system of a slightly variable G-Class star some 10 light years distant. Even eight millennia after the cataclysmic explosion, the nebula glowed with an energy equivalent to 75,000 suns. The dynamo that powered it was a spinning neutron star — a pulsar — that was the actual remnant of the supernova. A starship crew unlucky enough to drop sublight anywhere near it would have been struck dead by several kinds of radiation in seconds.

Upon arriving in the Hideout System, a short search revealed a world twice the diameter of Earth orbiting in the temperate zone, which they named “Brinks.” Brinks had a moon three times larger than Luna, which they named “Sutton.” It was on Sutton that they established their base. Two gas giants in the system were dubbed “Bonnie” and “Clyde.”

As soon as the first tunnels were drilled into Sutton’s surface and sealed, the team began to sweep the skies for signs of civilization. Several months went by without result before they finally detected a gravity wave emanating from a nearby star, a wave that could only have originated in a stargate.

Having found what they were looking for, Dan Landon approved a mission to reconnoiter the target star. He put himself in command of the contact party and chose Lisa to be their expert on the Broa. Mark joined the roster by the simple expedient of being the only one available who had the necessary temperament and computer skills. Landon surprised everyone by selecting Mikhail Vasloff, the anti-interstellar activist, as the fourth member. He was tapped for the coveted assignment because Landon wanted someone along who would take a skeptical view.

After a preliminary reconnoiter, they made contact with the locals, who identified themselves as the Voldar’ik and their planet as Klys’kra’t. The team claimed to be representatives of a race called Vulcans from the planet of Shangri La on the other side of the Sovereignty. To disguise their origin, they traveled in Sar-Say’s salvaged transport, a Type Seven Broan freighter, renamed the Ruptured Whale.

As a cover story, they had professed interest in various Voldar’ik gadgets. However, their true mission was to acquire astronomical data about the Sovereignty and its network of stargates. That was Mark’s job. While the rest of the team distracted their hosts, he plumbed the Klys’kra’t planetary database on the pretext of searching for marketable products.

For two weeks, Mark spent every waking moment sitting in front of an alien computer, programming search routines using the peculiar Broan script. He was hampered by the fact that he could not be obvious about what he really wanted and had to approach queries about the general state of the Sovereignty, the Broa, and all astronomical data as though by accident.

Even if he had been able to compose straightforward queries, the task would have been hopeless. The planetary data base was several times larger than the Library of Parliament database on Earth. A lifetime was insufficient to find everything they were looking for.

While Mark labored, Dan Landon broached the subject of purchasing a copy of the database itself, with the cover story that it would help them select trade goods when they returned with a bigger ship. In the meantime, Mark filled the memory of his portable recorder three times with tidbits of interest, if not precisely what he was looking for. Periodically, he returned to the Ruptured Whale to upload what he had learned into its computers.

It was on his third such trip that he met Effril, the Taff trader.

* * *

“What did you do when he told you he was a Taff trader?”

“The truth, Ma’am. I nearly crapped my pants.”

“I take it he looked nothing like Sar-Say?”

“No, Ma’am. He was tall, blue and furry. Cautiously, I asked him if there were another species by the same name. He said he wasn’t aware of any. Then I explained that I was from a distant world, and being young, had never seen a Broa. I asked Effril to describe one.

“What he described was nothing like the pictures Sar-Say sketched for us of the Galactic Overlords. In fact, Effril’s description was a perfect fit for Sar-Say himself, right down to his yellow eyes.”

Chapter Three

“So Sar-Say is a Broa?” Nadine Halstrom asked.

“Yes, Ma’am,” Mark replied.

“There isn’t any possibility of a mistake?”

“We confronted him with it. He confessed.”

“How did he take the news that he had been outed?”

Lisa laughed. “He’s a cheeky little bastard. He promised to make us his personal slaves and let us live out our lives in luxury if we returned to Klys’kra’t. We told him to go to hell.”

“If he lied about himself, he must have told other lies,” the Coordinator mused.

“I don’t think so, Ma’am,” Lisa replied. “About the Sovereignty itself, he seems to have spoken the literal truth.”

“Why would he do that?”

“Because he had no way to ascertain what we knew at first. He couldn’t afford to be caught in a lie, else we might have begun wondering if he was who he claimed. Later, it was too late to change his story. So he told us the truth about everything else to keep his identity hidden.”

“Why?”

“It was all a plot to get us to take him back to the Sovereignty. He figured that he could get a message to whatever species we contacted. As a master, they would have instantly obeyed any order he gave them. It almost worked.”

“So, to sum up,” the Coordinator said with a tone of resignation in her voice, “We are facing our worst case scenario. There really is a Broan Sovereignty and it is as big and mean as Sar-Say claims. We were lucky at New Eden. Had things gone differently, it would have been the Broa sending the expedition. We might even now have their boots on our necks. And lastly, there isn’t a goddamned thing we can do about it!”

“No, Ma’am,” Lisa replied.

“I beg your pardon?”

“There is something we can do about it.” Lisa turned to Mark. “Tell her your idea, darling!”

* * *

The wardroom aboard the Ruptured Whale was a depressing place during that long climb from Klys’kra’t. Mark Rykand had been especially dejected, for only he knew how close Sar-Say’s scheme had come to succeeding.

However, as Samuel Johnson once remarked, “The prospect of being hanged concentrates the mind wonderfully.” In response to an offhand comment from Lisa, he had been struck by an inspiration so bold that it had momentarily stunned him. Even now, a year later, he could think of no reason why his idea wouldn’t work… save that the human race lacked the fortitude to attempt it.

In the instant that Lisa turned to him, his confidence drained away, replaced with doubt. What, he thought, if I am wrong?”

Living with a person for three years gives one sensitivity to their nuances. Sensing Mark’s turmoil, Lisa gave his hand a gentle squeeze and smiled. Encouraged, Mark took a deep breath, gazed around at the expectant faces, cleared his throat, and launched into the speech that he had practiced in his head for more than a year.

“Madame Coordinator. Gentlemen. The Broa are probably the biggest threat the human race has ever faced. That is why you sent us seven thousand light years to verify the tall tales of a shipwrecked alien. If even half of what Sar-Say said was true, then we just couldn’t ignore the threat.

“We are back to report that the Sovereignty is very real and even more dangerous than we had feared. We are not helpless, however. There is something we can do.”

“Then let us hear it!” Nadine Halstrom said, impatiently.

“Yes, ma’am. To make sense, I need to start at the beginning, which in this case, is a trip Lisa and I took while planning the expedition.

* * *

Planning for the Crab Nebula Expedition had taken place on Earth under stringent security, at a private resort on the North African coast. Mark and Lisa both attended for their particular working groups — Mark for Astronomy and Lisa for Alien Technologies. On the third day of the conference, they found themselves with no commitments. Lisa suggested that they visit the nearby Rock of Gibraltar, explaining that one of her ancestors commanded the British garrison there during the siege of 1782.

“An interesting tale, Mr. Rykand,” Nadine Halstrom said, “but what has that to do with our situation?”

“During the retreat from Klys’kra’t, a bunch of us were sitting around the wardroom, moaning about our troubles, when Lisa said that it was a shame we didn’t have an impregnable fortress like The Rock to defend us against the Broa.

“The comment triggered a thought. I suddenly realized that she was wrong. We do have such a fortress.”

“I’m sorry, but I don’t follow you.”

“The Broa rule a million suns and so far as we can tell, there has not been a single successful revolt against them in thousands of years.”

“I imagine that is precisely what Mikhail Vasloff will tell the public. By the way, where is Citizen Vasloff? I expected to see him here.”

“In quarantine aboard PoleStar, by your order.”

“My order?”

Dieter Pavel cleared his throat. “I sent the order, Madame Coordinator. I figured that we didn’t want him rabble rousing until you’d had a chance to hear the report of the expedition.”

“He isn’t truly ill, is he?”

“His doctor thinks he has a cold. I argued that one couldn’t be too careful with E.T. viruses.”

“You will go far in politics, my boy,” she told her assistant with a smile. “Either that or you will be hanged.” Turning back to Mark, “You said we have an impregnable fortress to defend us, Mr. Rykand. What might that be?”

“Why, our anonymity, of course. The Broa don’t know where to find us. They don’t even know we exist. That, and the stardrive. The stardrive gives us freedom of action.”

“Freedom of action to do what? Hide?”

“No, Ma’am. The one thing we cannot do is hide.”

“We have remained hidden this long.”

“We’ve been lucky. Evan, care to handle this?”

Dr. Evan Thompson, Alien Technologist, nodded and took over the narrative. “Sooner or later, the Broa are going to discover our little corner of the universe.”

“How?”

“Any number of ways. One of their ships may just blunder into one of our systems. In fact, it has already happened at New Eden. Then there is our electromagnetic footprint. We’ve been spewing radio, television, and holovision in all directions for centuries. What if some Broa picks up one of the early television programs? How long before their war fleet follows?”

“The Broan Sovereignty is 7000 light-years from here. If I understand my Einsteinian physics, that means that our radio waves will not reach them until we begin writing our dates with five digits.”

“We don’t know that,” Thompson replied with a shake of his shaggy mane. “The Crab Nebula is 7000 light-years distant. For all we know, the nebula marks the farthest reach of the Sovereignty. There could be a Broan world just beyond our expanding radio bubble right now.”

“Not a very likely scenario, that,” Anton Bartok muttered.

“Are you willing to risk the existence of the human race on that assumption?” Mark asked him, taking back control of the conversation.

“If we don’t hide, what do we do?” a perplexed Nadine Halstrom asked.

Mark looked at her, his features etched by determination. “Madam Coordinator, we can’t hide, not forever. And once they discover us, all will be lost. That leaves us a window of opportunity in which to act.”

“Act to do what?”

Mark shrugged. “Simple, really. We attack them before they can attack us!”

* * *

The subject of the conference sat in his cell aboard PoleStar and contemplated his future.

It had been five cycles since Sar-Say had fallen into the clutches of humans. Having survived the ambush on his transport, he had been shocked when his rescuers did not immediately recognize him. That shock had been compounded when he realized they were not subservients. In fact, they seemed not to know about Civilization at all. The thought that he was the captive of wild aliens frightened him more than had the attempted assassination that led him to this unknown section of space.

Worse, their ship was unlike any he had ever seen, or even heard of. It did not jump from point to point via stargates. Rather, it crossed the black gulf between stars like a water vessel sails an ocean. That alone proved that they were not of Civilization. For he could think of no other invention that would subvert the natural order quite so much as unrestricted access to the stars.

He’d had a great deal of time to think on that first voyage to the humans’ home planet. When they tried to speak with him, he pretended not to understand. For when he finally acknowledged their loud words and pantomime gestures, he would have but one chance to get his story right. There was much to consider.

Of necessity, his plan had been a simple one. It was critical that they not recognize him as a master. For if they did, they would likely kill him out of hand. Nor did the prospect of life in a cage appeal to him. He needed to find a way to get them to return him home without realizing that they were doing so. For that, he must gain their trust. He concluded that he would have to tell them the truth about nearly everything.

There was risk in his plan, of course. Not knowing human psychology, he worried that the truth might frighten them into concealment. That would doom him to a lifetime of captivity.

He need not have worried, for the humans reacted with the same primate curiosity that his own people possessed. When they identified Sky Flower, they organized an expedition to seek out Civilization.

They had taken him along on the expedition to advise them and he had been working on the humans to allow him to meet the native subservients, ostensibly to back up their own false story.

His plan had come close to working, but something had gone wrong. The contact group had hurriedly returned to the ship and they had departed Klys’kra’t. Later, they confronted him with the fact that they knew his true identity.

If imprisonment taught him anything, it was patience. He’d made good use of the entertainment screen they provided him. As he became more familiar with humans, he came to believe that despite their wildness, Earth might one day make a prime colony, especially with him as its master.

So, despite bitter disappointment, Sar-Say began plotting once more toward the day he would be awarded the Mastership of Earth. So long as they kept him penned in this cell aboard their orbital habitat, he could do nothing. However, should his situation change, he must be ready to take advantage of any opportunities that came his way…

* * *

Lisa Arden stood on the balcony of the resort hotel on Lake Constance and watched as a full moon lifted its gibbous form over the distant tree-studded horizon. Down below, the surface of the lake reflected back the multicolored lights of the far shore, while in the middle distance, an entertainment ship ablaze with lights made its way toward Friedrichshafen, the soft strains of a string quartet wafting softly to her across the dark waters.

Lisa inhaled deeply, held it for a moment, then exhaled with gusto. It was good to be back on Earth! At least for tonight, all was right with her world. The night breeze was just cool enough to be refreshing. Her man lay sprawled inside on the spacious bed, snoring softly, as men were wont to do following lovemaking. The moon was rising, turning the lights reflected by the lake into a kaleidoscope of colors.

In the sky above, Jupiter was a brilliant white spark and Mars a duller red one, while the stars twinkled as they had for millions of years. On a night like this, it would have been easy to pretend that those stars were the same as they had been for millennia, sparkling diamonds put in the night sky for lovers rather than the home of a comic-looking race of megalomaniacal monkeys.

Her contemplation was interrupted by the sound of a door opening, then by a strong pair of arms enveloping her and warm hands slipping through the opening of her robe to fondle the warm flesh beneath. She leaned back into a bare muscular chest and sighed, content with the world.

“Good evening,” a soft voice whispered in her ear as lips nuzzled her disheveled hair.

She twisted her head back to plant a kiss. “Welcome back to the living, darling. I didn’t wear you out, did I?”

The soft breath emitted by the ensuing chuckle wafted into her ear as lips nibbled an earlobe. “Want to find out?”

“Not just yet,” she replied. “Maybe later. Now I just want to enjoy the night.”

“It is beautiful, isn’t it?”

“More beautiful than just about anything I have ever seen. It’s easy to forget how gorgeous the Earth is when you are in space.”

“Yes, it is. So, my love, what brings you outside? Did my snoring wake you?”

“No, I am just enjoying the night air… and wondering, I guess, if we did any good today.”

“They listened,” Mark replied, nuzzling her hair. “That is about the best we could expect.”

“But did they believe?”

“I think the Coordinator understood our arguments and probably sympathized with them, not that that will do us any good if the political opposition decides to side with Vasloff.”

She sighed. “I suppose they can’t keep him locked up forever.”

“It wouldn’t do any good. Lots of people will see the temporary safety of hunkering down and prefer it to the real danger of fighting back. That is the way it has always been, and the way it shall always be.”

“But we have to fight, Mark. It’s what we do and who we are.”

“You and I have had a chance to think it through,” he replied, suddenly serious as he pulled her tighter against him. “Earth’s teeming billions are going to take time to sort through the risks. Who knows? Maybe there is a middle ground between digging a hole and pulling it in after us and going out to conquer the Broan horde.”

“You don’t believe that.”

“No, I don’t. Many will.”

They fell silent and stared out over the darkened waters for long minutes, enjoying each other’s presence and the night. Finally, Lisa said, “We’re going to be fighting the Broa for the rest of our lives, aren’t we, Mark?”

He nodded into her hair. “You knew that when I first laid out my vision of Gibraltar Earth.”

“I guess I did,” she replied. “It’s just scary to think about all the troubles that lie in front of us.”

He laughed. “Name a time when that hasn’t been so. At least the Broa don’t yet know that we exist. With luck, when they find out, it will be too late.”

Chapter Four

A brisk breeze swept off the nearby azure sea to penetrate the office high above the largest city on the capital world of the Salefar Sector. The office was at the pinnacle of a golden tower that had no name. It needed none. Even the smallest cub of the planet’s indigenous species knew who dwelt in the tower and of the power he exercised over their daily lives. The city’s name in the language of the local autochthons was unpronounceable to the occupant of the tower office. He called it simply “Capital.” It was one of many cities throughout the galaxy that bore the same appellation. The planet was Sssassalat, a word that had been arbitrarily chosen without regard to the fact that the vocal apparatus of the natives had difficulty forming sibilants.

The wind brought with it a cacophony of alien smells, all of which were picked up by the acute olfactory sense of the small being who perched on the resting frame located behind the desk ornately carved from the expensive black-gold wood that could only be found on the home world. Within the gleaming expanse of desktop were imbedded the instruments the tower dweller used to communicate with his many underlings. Several auxiliary screens were lit at the moment. He paid no attention to any of them.

For several demi-periods, he had been watching the antics of a multicolored vark as it rode the wind currents tumbling off the lee side of the golden tower. The vark was unaware that it was far from the crags and peaks of its mountain hunting ground. Its attention was focused on searching out a four-winged mardak for a midday repast. As the airborne hunter made micrometric adjustments to its wing shape in order to ride the tricky air currents, its long snakelike neck kept the head rigid in space as it spied what it had been searching for. Then, without warning, the vark folded its wings of taught skin, and dove out of the watcher’s view.

As it went into its stoop, the tower occupant felt a moment of wistfulness. The vark’s problems were confined to filling its belly each day, and come mating season, of fighting off the other claimants for its brood of females. For one on whose shoulders lay the responsibility for an entire star sector, such a simple life held an atavistic attraction.

Ssor-Fel was not a large being. Most intelligent species would have found his diminutive size unimpressive were it not for the fact that he and his kind were the unchallenged rulers of the known universe. He was a biped, as are most intelligent beings. On the rare occasions when he chose to stand erect, he topped out at a bare meter-and-a-half. His ancestors had been tree dwellers — if the multi-trunk, vine-like growths of home world could be called trees. His arms were long and designed for brachiating, swinging from stalk to branch, and during mating season, for holding his body aloft while he engaged in the ancient ballet of the sexes. When on solid ground, he moved with an alternating gait, first supporting his weight on clenched six-finger fists and then swinging his lower torso forward to ride on club-shaped feet at the end of stubby legs.

His fur was brown, with an intricate pattern of narrow black stripes that extended to his neck. Around his yellow eyes were the white streaks that signified the passage of lifespan. The white specks solidified into a solid mass around two paddle-shaped ears that jutted out at right angles from his head. His snout was likewise streaked with white around the four breathing holes on each side. Below the rows of nostrils, his mouth was open to show the teeth of an omnivore and a long tongue tinged with a healthy pink glow.

Having wasted too much time following the antics of the local fauna, Ssor-Fel reproached himself silently and turned back to the matter at hand. As was normal, there was too much to do and insufficient members of his species to do it. When in a bad mood, he often contemplated this eternal state of affairs. It was as though, having given his race dominion over a vast number of stars, some cosmic force had then decided to play a joke by limiting the number of administrators available to do the work.

His species was less fecund than most intelligent races. That was the consequence of the need for females to carry their young on their backs as they brachiated through the vine tops, and of prolonged droughts that had once plagued the home world. When the supply of purple fruit that had once been the staple of life was limited, it made sense for each mating pair to have one or two cubs each twelve-cycle.

With the invention of agriculture and the discovery that insectivoids were tasty, however, that imperative had gone the way of the giant crabs that had once roamed the golden plains. Yet, the birthrate remained low because the memory of drought had been baked into the Race’s life matrix.

Despite their habitually low numbers, his species had slowly built a high energy civilization, mastered first a world, then a star system, and finally, the surrounding stellar domains. For the great invention of the Race was the discovery that precisely modulated powers would open pathways to the stars.

It had been this technology that had allowed the Race, though small in number, to conquer every known inhabited star system. Nor were their conquests complete. A large part of Ssor-Fel’s duties was to search out intelligent species that had not yet been brought under control, and to remedy that oversight.